Founder Spotlight: Lina Chan

A look at Parla

WAFFA
2 min readMay 2, 2021

Tell us a bit about your company

Parla is a digital women’s health platform. On Parla women can access personalised guidance for their fertility journey, order at-home fertility tests, connect with health experts, and collaborate with a community to better understand their health.

What inspired you to start Parla?

Having myself struggled with fertility issues and pregnancy loss, I felt that the current care pathways for women were reactive in nature and lacked focus on mental wellbeing. I founded Parla as I saw an emerging trend of women taking control of their health and wanted to empower them with more choice, convenience, and confidence.

What about your personal background, experience, or perspective fuels your passion for this venture?

I am an experienced investor, management consultant and mentor to health startups. My personal experience struggling with fertility and pregnancy loss is what fuels my passion for this venture. I think that more needs to be done to empower women and break the taboos that plague women’s health challenges.

What has been one or two of the biggest learnings so far?

In a start-up there’s a constant tension between capital / team and resources. Without the capital it’s hard to hire the team and get the right resources. But without the right team it’s hard to execute and deliver on the goals. It’s a daily balance we have to keep managing.

Photo credit: Parla

Check out Parla, follow them @ MeetParla, or connect with Lina directly!

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